


The Last of Our Kind

by estuary



Category: RG Veda
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-02
Updated: 2013-05-02
Packaged: 2017-12-10 04:07:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/781579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estuary/pseuds/estuary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We inherit so many things from our parents in the end. </p><p>Kendappa-ou comes to terms with the inevitable end to her story. A piece in a handful of movements.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last of Our Kind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Runespoor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runespoor/gifts).



> I was really happy to get this request! After all these years, I still love this pairing. I really enjoyed writing for them! Kendappa's mind is always a fun sandbox to play in, even when she's at her darkest moments.

Her mother died of a broken heart. 

Kendappa-ou long questioned the way she had had collapsed in on herself, how Yasha-ou's eyes had always been drawn elsewhere. Her mother was beautiful, admired, indispensably important – and she died without being seen. 

It was Yasha-ou's inattention that caused her sorrow; the blame should fall squarely on him.

Yet some days she hates her mother more for it. 

What a disgraceful end for a god. Who falls in love so fast and so fatally? 

The answer hides in Souma's laughs and in the second crease in the palm of her hand, where the skin is still the softest. In a certain coil of muscle in her hips. That she is kind to those she has only just met, and strong enough to carry the weight on her losses in her heart like a parcel of coins. 

The heart is too powerful a decision maker. It knew Kendappa's choice before her mind quite caught up with it. 

But still it was a choice. She made it from across the room and as she braided flowers to loop into Souma's hair and the first time she demanded, softly, "Kiss me."

Kendappa-ou chose. She makes her own choices. 

This is the last time they will sleep in the same bed for a while. 

She invites Souma to stay with her, as she always must, and Souma's response is is to flush and fluster and at last make little sounds of acceptance. 

“If you insist, my lady.” She never presumes she has leave to stay, but is more forward with her when they are closer to sleeping. 

In the darkness it is easier to dwell, with her heartbeat a pensive rhythm against the back of Souma's shoulder where she rests against her, locked around her back with her arms fixed across her waist. Even in the dead of night, there is still some part of her that moves with music – her thoughts, her blood. Put a sword in her hand, she thinks of singing steel and blood (always blood), the song of a severed vein. 

There is no one else like Souma left alive. 

She is the resilient pillar – and that _is_ what she seems: a pillar, resolute and sturdy and supportive – standing still in the wreckage of a world more wreck than world and rent into long, deep scars from war. 

Heaven will survive, even when it overgrows and knocks down the ruins that stand against it, pillars and warriors and all. Souma is strong as stone and soft as the down she felt under Garuda's wings as a child. 

Maybe it was cruel to save her. 

Like her, Kendappa is the last. She is her father's daughter in her mother's image. In places where they were weak their child grew stronger. Her mother's shadow has never quite left, and her father lies still in her dreams in a great weeping pool of blood. So much of what they were follows her, their mistakes and all. Fatal mistakes are a family trait, and one she has not inherited, but they cast a cancerous pallor over everything. 

There is no one else like her left alive, either. 

A shame the bloodline will go cold with her. 

 

Her mother desired the impossible and let her own pity consume her. 

There is love and there is blindness. Each decision is its own answer. 

The maids gossip within earshot only once, about how she may soon take on a husband. Prince Tenou is quite taken with her, and she is already a favorite in the court. She would tell them they'll have no tongues to gossip with if they do it again, but in the end her chastising is hollower. Her handmaidens are fearful for all of a week before time resumes as normal. 

“Won't they be afraid of you, my lady?” 

“It won't last,” she replies. “Would you be afraid of me, Souma?”

She runs her fingers over her collarbone while Souma's surprise flickers at the corner of her mouth, then brushes that surprise away with the back of her thumb. 

Tenou is a nice boy. 

Souma is more.

 

Her mother died of longing. 

While Souma lives with and serves Kisshouten and she is in court, the distance between them is a minor inconvenience, necessary for security. She does not waste away of sorrow in isolation. Court calls, duty beckons, and there are no answers hiding in the filigree carved into her bedroom ceiling. 

Letters can be intercepted – too much risk for some fleeting sentiment on a scrap of paper. 

Besides, what would she write? 

_Dear Souma,_

_You are the densest person I have ever met._

Everything she could say to Souma, she has said already. Some words aren't meant to be spoken, and others lose their meaning when written down. 

There are few words she has found that are analogous to true feelings. 

_Dear Souma,_

_I have composed dozens of my own songs, and none for you._

“Should I play for you before we part ways?” 

“I'd like that very much, my lady,” Souma says. Then softer, she says, “Kendappa-ou.” 

She obliges, though it means she must withdraw her hand from where it laces finger beside finger through hers. To save asking what she sound play, Kendappa chooses her own melody. It is familiar and well-warn into her fingers, as familiar as her harp and her blade. 

They separate soon after that. Her mouth still tastes of the curve of Souma's jaw, and Kendappa flies her city fast and low, so that it almost takes the tops off of the trees. 

_Dear Souma,_

_I do love you greatly, but -_

The word hangs out before her as a note plucked out out tremulously after a cadence, when there is no further movement. 

Unresolved tones make a song so ugly. 

_I do love you greatly, but._

 

Her father died of loyalty. 

Loyalty killed Souma's parents, too – someone else's. Loyalty has more (and sharper) edges than Sougeppa. 

How strange it is to think of their parents' deaths as such passive things, when in all death there is a choice, an action. Once a thing is in motion there is so little one can do to stop it; strong winds cease only for mountains. 

They are in Taishakuten's court alone, the Emperor himself and his generals (and her). She is there for her music, for whatever purpose she could serve Taishakuten as a general has not yet been called upon. 

There's a village worth of dead men in the north waiting for the ax to fall. The ax is Taishakuten's word, honed to the finest sharpness, carried on the backs of his army. 

Vengeance will kill Souma the way softness killed Kendappa-ou's mother and father. She imagines her not on the point of some soldier's spear or put to mercy at the blades of an army, but torn asunder by the most terrible and powerful of gods.

Her hands tremble at the strings. It's all wrong, be it intuition or reasoned thought. 

One day, Souma will die. 

As a group, they are dismissed – after all, she is one of them by definition. 

In the halls, Tenou approaches juggling more than one goblet of sweet wine in overburdened fingers, while she is still imagining being the love that does the killing, instead of being killed by it. There's something serene about it, something soft, like dying while well asleep - and something choking, hard stones laid out on the crown of her head, her chest, her neck. There aren't very many goodbyes left that she'll be saying to Souma.

 _Not now_ , she wishes she could say, but Prince Tenou is a kind boy and it cannot be helped. 

“Kendappa-ou – I brought – I thought perhaps you'd like a drink after playing so beautifully all day.” Tenou blushes and accidentally pushes the wine forward too suddenly and too soon. Though it falls, she reaches out without thinking to catch it before it can spill. 

Bishamonten looks at her with eyes alight and fiery, and Kendappa-ou must bite the inside of her mouth. 

“You have some reflexes, don't you, Kendappa-ou?” Zouchouten's laugh is thunder; she likes him better. 

“One of few things I inherited from my father,” she says.

Kendappa-ou makes her own choices.


End file.
